Sunday, 22 September 2013

What follows is a transcript of the Defense video I made on Disney's big budget western The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer. Link to the actual video is available below: https://vimeo.com/75135278

Defending The Lone
Ranger- A Critical Re-Evaluation

By Abel Diaz

This may very
well be the most difficult, and more than likely, the most polarizing (video) I
have ever had to make. I feel like I’m going up against a gigantic swarm with
maybe one other guy and that other person lurking in the background for any
kind of support, and given the nature of the video, I don’t imagine this will
be a popular one from me. But before we dive into this, and there is a lot to
cover, let me just get a few things straight.

Do I think this
is the best film ever made? NO.

Do I think this
is the best film of the year? NO.

Do I even think
this is the best film of the summer? No.

However, I still
really enjoyed what Disney’s mega western had to offer. I found it to be a very
fun and manic ride, and I do believe the film has a sense of worth and genuine
merit that has been glossed over or just straight up ignored due to the meat
grinder that was its critical reception. It is flawed, don’t get me wrong, but
I believe there is more going on with Lone Ranger beyond what you might think,
given the reputation and ire it built up this past summer.

In this (video), I
will endeavor to explain my reasons as best as I can and perhaps clarify things
for those who have seen it and are still on the fence about their sentiments,
or for those who haven’t seen it and are curious. However, this video will also
not be a straight up white knight of the film. As the title also implies, I
will be evaluating the whole affair, and discussing what I felt went wrong with
the lead up to and the subsequent marketing of the film to a mass audience, and
even my own issues with the film. To help make this video more digestible, I
will be dividing into a series of parts, and the times for each part will be displayed
in the description box below if you wish to skip ahead to a part that more
intrigues you, or return to the video later for any reason.

With that said,
let us dive into Disney’s The Lone Ranger.

PART I: ELEPHANTS
IN THE ROOM (Origins, Marketing and Depp’s race)

Now, before I can
get my teeth into the film itself, there are some things I have to discuss that
have arisen about this film that I feel need to be addressed if this is to be
done properly. First, let’s talk about how the project began life: around 2006,
during the making of the second Pirates film, Depp talked with director Gore
Verbinski about doing a movie based on a childhood favourite of his, The Lone
Ranger, a character originally created for radio back in the 1930s but most
famous for a 50s television series starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels.
Specifically, he wanted to make one that focused more on the masked avenger’s
sidekick, the Native American warrior Tonto, the role played most famously by
Silverheels in the television incarnation. Given the wild success of the next
two Pirates films, it wasn’t long before Disney decided to consider this
property seriously, producer Jerry Bruckheimer having had the rights to it for
a feature film version for some time. Around 2008, writers Ted Elliot and Terry
Rossio were brought on board to write the screenplay, and in 2009, veteran
British film maker Mike Newell, who also did Prince of Persia for Bruckheimer
and Disney, was being considered to direct, but it was Gore Verbinski, the man
behind the first three Pirates films who got the job in 2010.

Why the history
lesson you ask?

To establish that
this wasn’t just some quick cash grab schlock that the studio threw out quick
and lean to pick for box office gold, like say, Sony’s Smurfs films or Fox’s
Chipmunk films. This was Depp’s baby, and a project that Disney took seriously
when they greenlit it, given that they were calling in some of their big names
in to help Depp put this project on the screen. Regardless if you like
Verbinski’s, Bruckheimer’s or Elliot and Rossio’s body of work or not, they
have never been involved with projects that were cheaply made, shallow money
suckers made on a moment’s notice by bargain bin talent looking to fill a slot
in a studio schedule. With them onboard, it was obvious that this was going to
be a film that meant business, much like the Spielberg and Jackson Tintin film
that was released in 2011 and is soon getting a sequel helmed by Jackson.

Or at least, so
it seemed, as by 2011, the studio put the film on delay due to budgetary
concerns, no doubt in part due to the underperformance of Prince of Persia and
Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Disney’s other two big summer films, and the constant
ballooning and problematic filming of Andrew Stanton’s John Carter, no doubt putting
a strain on the studio’s finances, since this was before they had bought Marvel
and Star Wars. But by spring of 2012, the film was back in production and
shooting, however, it’s what happened during filming that I wish to draw
attention to here. As we all know, Disney bought up Marvel, John Carter bombed
and Avengers was a runaway success, and I believe this chain of events was
crucial as I think it was the beginning of the project’s undoing from a studio
standpoint since it essentially made Lone Ranger an irrelevant project that
they were now stuck with when they had a colossal cash cow in the form of
Marvel at their disposal. They no longer needed to look for other works or make
their own inhouse films, instead, they could milk Marvel for all it was worth,
as proven by the incredible success of Iron Man 3, which outdid Avengers’ hefty
takings by double, and that’s not even taking into consideration the boatload
they made from all the merchandising they sold off the back of that film.

Disney had solved their problems from a commercial standpoint, since they had
more franchises besides Pirates for their big summer tentpoles, and sold lots
of toys in the process. So then, what to do with this beefy, oddball western
that now seemed completely obsolete given their newfound wealth, not helped by
the meagre business that Depp’s other pet project, Dark Shadows, did?

Well, the
marketing rang the first alarm bells: the teaser poster was fine, definitely
taking a page out of the Nolan Batman films with a simple but effective and
adaptable image, combining the visages of the Lone Ranger and Tonto as one.

But
then, the main poster came out...

(cue wah-wah
effect)Ohhhh, Dear. This
has one of the worst posters in the history of not just westerns or action
films, but in the whole of blockbuster film making, and is the definition of a
Day 1, do not do lesson at Design and Advertising School.It’s effectively a production still that was
thrown into MS Paint or a really lax version of Photoshop, and had a Text box
dumped on the front. At the most, speaking as someone who has dealt with
Photoshop design before, this was literally a 5 minute job, if that. It's is
absolutely embarrassing, and a giant red flag of how much the studio now cared
about the film.

And then there
was the other big M word: merchandising. Here is the Disney store page for Lone
Ranger, with a total of 15 items. This includes some clothing, some Lego sets,
some dolls, some drinking utensils and a costume. Now let’s look at the page
for Iron Man 3. This section has 35 items for sale, including the
aforementioned objects, as well as a larger selection and variety of toys and
costumes, walkie talkies, caps, underwear, watches, even wallets and a print of
a classic 60s Iron Man cover.

A movie that came
out several months ago has more merchandising still for sale than what was,
seemingly, their big premiere summer, high action blockbuster from a team of
respected, accomplished filmmakers. Even if you know
nothing about business or marketing, shouldn’t this raise another red flag that
something is really wrong with how Disney are treating the film? Even if Disney
knew that Lone Ranger wasn’t going to be a big hit, Universal already proved
back in 2003 when they released Ang Lee’s Hulk that you can make a hefty chunk
of change off of merchandising for a summer film even when the film itself
isn’t a runaway success to help break even. It’s how the film was able to turn
a profit, according to people who worked there at the time of that film’s
release. This, from my perspective, helps cement the fact that Marvel helped
kill Lone Ranger’s chances and the level of commitment that Disney had for it.

However, besides
the questionable work put into promoting the film, there was also another
disputed aspect that the film could never escape from, and unfortunately, it
came from the man who helped bring the project into existence in the first
place: the casting of Johnny Depp as Tonto. No matter where you went online,
the cries of ‘Racism!’ and ‘Red Face!’ rang loud and clear, and even the
production attempted rebuttal by pointing out Depp’s partial Cheerokee ancestry
did nothing to help stem the wave of criticism. In fact, it only helped fuel
it, increasing the cries for the casting of an actual native American in the
part.

This is where we
get into the first of my major rebuttals against the criticism that the film
received. First off, for all the crying that people did, no one seemed to have
an alternative choice for the role of Tonto and for good reason: there are no
major or prominent Native American actors working in Mainstream American. Most
are consigned to supporting roles or just extras, usually in westerns or
reconstructionist documentaries about the taming of the West. The closest we’ve
come to having a big name Native American was Wes Studi, most famous for
playing the Navi chief in Avatar, but again that was a supporting role and
anyway, he was far too old for this role, at the age of 65. The only relatively
familiar Native American actors are those who played wolves in the Twilight
films, and given this film’s largely male demographic and those films abysmal
critical reception, it wouldn’t have a smart move, creatively or financially,
to cast them in the secondary lead role. And secondly, these people also
obviously didn’t do their homework because Depp has not only played a Native
American, but even devoted a film to some of their plights in the form of his
1996 directorial debut, The Brave, also starring Marlon Brando. For those, and
I assume confidently many, who’ve never heard of the film, the plot deals with
a poor Native American family whose father, played by Depp, sells his body to a
snuff film in order to help feed his family. If it sounds grim and morbid,
that’s because it is, and was both praised and criticized for its dark,
visceral nature, earning a semi cult status among Depp and Brando fans. It’s
almost funny how people criticized the production team of the Lone Ranger for
not doing their homework when they weren’t bothered to go look on IMDB for two
minutes and check over Depp’s filmography, or look up actual Native American
actors that they would at all recognize, for that matter.

But taking that
out of the equation, and looking at what Depp did with the character on its own
merits, there is a surprising amount of thought gone into it. First, the look
of this Tonto is based on a painting "I am Crow" by Kirby Sattler,
which depicts a Native American in front of a flying crow, thus making it look
like a headdress, an image none too dissimilar to the famous look of Native
Americans with elaborate feather headdresses, or indeed recalling the outfits
of other Ancient American cultures, like the Aztecs who famously wore the skins
and heads of jaguars and eagles into battle. But even if you discount as
external to the film itself, it also fits in the context of the film, since the
crow isn’t just some goofy gimmick that Depp came up with, but rather, it’s
Tonto’s pet crow from when he was a boy, and it too was killed in the massacre
that destroyed his village, and with its blood, he paints the war stripes on
his face as a young man that mark his quest for justice that ultimately leads
him to meet the Ranger in the first place. He’s wearing it on his head, much
like how some, after a relative or other loved one is cremated, carry around
ashes in little pendants or urns. It shows the affection he has for the
creature, and helps ground the character a little more as opposed to making
another wacky Depp creation. Furthermore, it's his symbol of what's he fighting
for. Plus it serves a practical purpose later in the film, when Tonto
infiltrates the villain’s silver mine and uses the crow, much like how miners
used canaries, to scare the soldiers into thinking there’s toxic gas down
there, and help rescue the Ranger from execution, thus not making it just some
perfunctory gimmick or cheap sight gag as some would assume or have claimed.

PART II: TECHNICALS
& PERFORMANCES

And since we are
on the topic of Depp, let’s get into talking about casting, starting off with,
well, him: As expected, Depp turns in a good performance, his tremendously
expressive face playing a particularly large role here, since a lot of what
Tonto thinks and feels is communicated like this, given that he speaks in
short, broken English. Some have claimed that this is just another rehash of
Jack Sparrow, and while both are eccentric characters, there is a very marked
difference in approach and philosophy between these two: Sparrow was modelled,
as we all know, on a lot of classic rock stars, like Keith Richards or Mick
Jagger, a lot of his comedy coming from odd mannerisms or reactions to a scene
or event, usually retorting with some kind of drunken, nonsensical ramble. In a
word, Sparrow is built on excess. Tonto, however, is significantly quieter and
more restrained, and lot of his humour, as mentioned, comes from Depp’s face as
opposed to silly lines or drunken swagger. In fact, here Depp pulls more from
silent comedy than he does 70s and 80s rock stars, specifically Charlie Chaplin
and Buster Keaton who, given the medium they worked, communicated a lot of
emotion and humour through their faces and body language, something Depp is
well versed and even previously honoured back in 1992 when he made Benny &
Joon, a romantic comedy where Depp played a young man obsessed with classic
cinema, and did an entire slapstick routine with Aidan Quinn based on Chaplin’s
antics.

Moving on to our
titular protagonist, Armie Hammer plays John Reid AKA The Lone Ranger, who
starts out as a fresh faced young lawyer who arrives in the western town of
Colby to practice law, meeting up with his older brother, played by James Badge
Dale, who is himself a successful and respected Texas Ranger. Hammer fits the
part well and has a charm and 'gentility' to him that fits the character of
John and he & Depp do work well with each other, having a relationship more
akin to an Odd Couple than your standard fast talking, action movie buddies,
however, much like Depp, there seems to be a very particular view of the Ranger
around: that he is an idiot, moron, clown, numbskull, dimwit, retard, whatever
your verbal weapon of choice is, mainly because a lot of the jokes in the film
usually involve him and are often sight oriented, such as him returning a doll
to a little girl only for it to get blown out of a window or him trying to
shoot two thugs and instead firing the bullet so it ricochets around until it
cuts a rope and brings a pair of wooden beams down on the two of them. However,
much like when people mix convoluted and confusing, a character being stupid
and then being the butt of a bunch of jokes are not the same thing. For
example, in Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg’s character is relatively smart, but
he’s often the focus or part of the film’s many jokes, and here it’s a similar
affair. The character itself is simply naïve, a city slicker who comes to the
frontier with a narrow and naïve world view that gets drastically shattered
when he is thrown into the rough and tumble environment in the frontier, which
was the intent, but the rest I’ll save for when we get into talking the film’s
themes and narrative later on. Furthermore, at least for his bumbling he is
proactive and pushes the narrative forward as opposed to waiting for things to
happen to him, whether it’s joining his brother in pursuit of Butch or his own
hunt for the bandit with Tonto and their investigating into his affairs.

The remainder of
the cast is filled with familiar dependables, but for the sake of time, I’ll go
over only the core ones: William Fichtner makes for a great Butch Cavendish,
and is probably the grizzliest and darkest Disney villain since Barbossa in the
first Pirates film, and definitely has a menace to him, helped out by Bill's
raspy voice and the great prosthetics work on his face. Tom Wilkinson as Latham
Cole, being the veteran that he is, turns in solid work, and gives the part the
needed combination of ruthlessness and burliness expected for a 19th century railroad
tycoon. Ruth Wilson as Rebecca Reid, the wife of the Ranger's brother and an
old flame of his, does well but she doesn't a large amount of material to work,
though thankfully she isn't whiny or one note like a lot of female love
interests in big films tend to be, and has an independence and fieriness to
her, being wary of Cole from the beginning before anything is revealed as
opposed to blindly and dumbly going along with him, as tends to be the more
common case.And speaking of Reids,
Badge Dale does well as the jack of all trades cowboy, and it's not hard to see
why John looks up to him. The performance is effectively a roll up of various
famous film cowboys, his visage reminscent of Clint Eastwood while his
demeanour is more akin to old Hollywood cowboys like John Wayne, a tough guy
with a good heart, and while he may not be onscreen for long, Dale's charisma
and ability sell the part more effectively than it might've otherwise been.
Barry Pepper, who some of you may best know as the weasly guard from The Green
Mile, as the American Captain, much like Fichtner and Wilkinson, turns in a
predicatbly good turn and is having fun in the role, especially in the last set
piece, but also has some quieter and even slightly sad moments that a stalwartlike Pepper delivers very well, however,
there is a slight inconsistency with him that I'll get into when I get into my
own peeves with the film.

As for the two
main child actors, playing Rebecca's son and the boy who listens to Tonto's
story, they both do well given the simplistic nature of the roles, though the
latter does somewhat confuse wide eyed curiosity and awe with Tobey Maguire
style bug eyes in the opening sequence.

And finally,
there's Helena Bonham Carter as Red, a brothel madam with an explosive secret.
What's strange is, in almost every review I've read and listened to, both
positive and negative, she's just written off as 'unnecessary' or
'unimportant'. There's pretty much been no comment on the performance itself at
all from anyone, which is a real shame as, though she does get maybe about 10
minutes of screentime across the entire film, Carter goes for it with role, and
some of the funnier and edgier material in the film, as befitting the role, and
she plays well off Hammer and Depp, especially during a really amusing scene
when the two get into her parlour and try to pass themselves off as health
inspectors, and she plays the role terrifically straight which works with the
ludicrous nature of the gag. It's is a shame she's not in it more, which makes
me hope that perhaps an extended cut will be released when the film hits home
media, but for she has, I really liked Carter here, and it's one of my
favourite things she done in quite a while.

Moving on to
technicals, the film looks and sounds great, and the money definitely shows.
Verbinski and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli, who also worked together on The
Ring, accomplish some of the mostbeautiful and sweeping Western imagery since the genre's brief revival
in the early 90s, combining the vistas and scope of someone like John Ford,
with a lot of the darker, more raw imagery that made the likes of Sergio Leone
famous. According to the film making-of book, Behind The Mask, which is a
terrific read, by the way, almost everything was built from the ground up,
including Colby, the brothel, the trains and even the mine, very little of it
being CG and it looks great, a lot of the muted and faded colours adding
credence to the Western setting and giving the impression that these places
existed in such a sun blasted area and have a sense of age. And the action is
no step down either; whereas a lot of modern action directors seem to be more
of the mentality that rapid, MTV-esque editing and close-up shaky cam create
intensity and excitement when all they do is inhibit the viewer from
appreciating all o0f the work that went into those sequences and lose a sense
of screen space and where the characters are, Verbinski sticks closer to the
playbook of classic Spielberg, with the camera pulled back and a much more relaxed
editing speed that allows one to take in the set pieces a lot more and allow
time for adrenaline and tension to build up as opposed to charging through the
sequence with complete disregard. Furthermore, whereas the standard formula
seems to be kick, punch, kick, punch, explosion, kick, punch, kick, punch, dumb
one liner, the humour is mixed in with the action and is more sight oreinted,
allowing for sequences that are both amusing and exciting without having to
stop for a cheap reaction shot or throwaway line as is the more common
practice. And there is a nice mix of set pieces, including both of the amazing
train sequences that bookend the film, along with an ambush in a canyon, a
shootout in a burning barn, a large battle in the silver mine between US
Soldiers and Comanche warriors,and even
an escape from a mob of raging, bible pushing Christians during the brothel
sequence. For a film that is nearly two and a half hours, I personally never
felt it, and the action is well positioned so you never go too long without
something exciting, and well paced so it never drags its feet and overstays its
welcome, like say, the action in Revenge of The Fallen or Marcus Nispel's
Pathfinder.

Musically, the
film nails it; let it be known that, though I like and grew up with Hans
Zimmer, his music in the past few years has left a little to be desired,
working perfectly within the films but not making for much of a good listening
experience outside of it, his work on Inception,being a prime example of something that works
better with the images than by itself. Here however, Zimmer seems to have
gotten a little of his old knack back, with a nicely varied score, primarily
making use of percussion and strings with some brass for the more bombastic
parts. From the sad violins in the beginning in San Francisco, to the
rapid-paced combination of percussion and strings during a lot of the action
that has a memorable beat and consistent build up that slowly grows, Zimmer's
perfectly underscores this film with what is a fusion of his work on Sherlock
Holmes and Dark Knight, with a little nod here and there to Ennio Morricone. Of
course, the show stealer is the incredible remix of Gioachino Rossini's
Williams Tell Overture, the Lone Ranger's signature tune. Unlike say, a classic
song being done over by a flavour of the month boyband or teen idol, Zimmer and
his team, specifically his collaborator Geoff Zanelli, manage to extend but not
leaden nor mess up the famous piece, and it is absolutely heavenly action
underscore, giving the final set piece that extra bit of pep to make it truly
special, and making one feel warm and giddy inside like a little kid again.
Heck, during the actual action, they even timed Butch's shots at Tonto on the
trains to beats in the Overture. That takes some talent and precision seldom
seen in blockbusters. If for nothing else, this is probably one the most
memorable themes in an action film in the past decade, and the soundtrack is
worth a listen to if only for this amazing piece.

PART III:
NARRATIVE & WRITING

When it comes to
this section, there's two giant cards that have been pulled with regards to it:
1) The film is too long, shallow and stuff needed to be cut and 2) It's tonally
inconsistent between serious and humourous, thus making it an awkward experience.
While the latter does have some slight the legs, the former I completely
disagree with, well, most of it, and I feel these is born more of people being
sold one film through trailers and advertising and less on the film making bad
choices. In contrast to most critics, and a good portion of those viewing this
video, I vehemently disagree with the claim that the segments involving Old
Tonto and the boy in the 1930s are completely perfunctory and should've been
removed for one simple reason: it's the film's central idea, and in fact, it's
ironic that this film wasn't the one called Legend of The Lone Ranger as that's
what it is about: it's a story about stories, or rather, legends and the way
they are born, and I find it really amusing that the film is being criticized
for the very thing it's about.

Tonto here isn't
just some old man telling a kid a story, rather throughout, Tonto is
incorporating elements from what's around him in the museum and fitting them
into the story, such as a bag of peanuts that Tonto uses to bless one of the
dead rangers, and the kid is often questioning them or asking Tonto what they
have to do with it or how certain events were possible, rather than just being
a wide eyed, passive observer. Even one of the film’s closing lines when the
kid asks him if what he said was true and Tonto replies with something to the
effect of ‘You Decide’ indicates what the film is about; storytelling and
imagination (which applies to another theme of the film that I’ll address in a
second), and how it can be distorted or altered by those who tell it. As the
saying goes ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’.

This of course,
isn’t all that new, as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance from 1946 used a
similar idea of a fish out of water lawyer who ends up becoming famous for
something he never actually did, and many anti-westerns of the 60s and 70s also
sought to demystify the Old West, such as Once Upon a Time In The West, Butch
Cassidy and Little Big Man, showing it as a much harsher, more morally ambiguous
place and the heroes as far more complicated and less saintly individuals. However,
here, this all has a bigger, more special significance: The Lone Ranger
character was very much born of the more glamourous, black hats/white hats kind
of West that was the popular view of it not just in old films but in much of
America’s own mythology and fiction, a straight forward, clean cut good guy who
righted wrong and marauded the Western plains ala the way John Wayne and
Randall Scott would become famous for in a lot of classic hollywood Westerns.
When putting all of these elements together; the unreliable narrator who is
passing on and old story to another person, a character that symbolises a
simplified, cleaner West and then placing him in a story and with a supporting
cast rooted in a much grimer, dirtier, meaner West akin to the works of Sergio
Leone, and what you have is a film that seeks to question and peel back the
very nature of the legends of the Old West. Verbinski & Bruckheimer have
talked about how they viewed this story; taking a character from an older,
‘cleaner’ Western, a Jimmy Stewart type, and then putting them in a world more
like that of a Sergio Leone or Clint Eastwood film, where the straightforward
black and white rules simply don’t and can’t work, and then seeing what would
happen. Tonto’s story is very much that: a tale of a naïve man from one world
trying to keep to those values and apply them to a world that simply can’t play
by said rules, and in the end, having to adapt and rise to the challenge,
thereby, becoming something more and ultimately becoming a legend, a symbol of
ideals that contrast with the actual reality of the world it came from. In so
doing, the telling is more important than what’s being told. Once again, ‘when
the legend becomes fact, print the legend’.

This also, in
part, helps explains and even clear some of the tonal choices the film makes,
since we’re not only being told this from the perspective of an unreliable
narrator, but also someone who is merging these two different sides of the
Western into one and as a by product, familiar imagery and things that were
straightforward and clean cut in one become truncated, twisted and altered by
the other: Silver, the Ranger’s trusty steed, has more of a oddball personality
and self awareness, doing things like drink beer and climb up trees that are
not befitting the standard portrayal of heroic horses. The bandits are not just
moustachioed Mexicans or muscular meatheads, but come from differing
backgrounds and nationalities, and even incorporate other elements such as
cannibalism and transvestialism as part of their reputation, not something
entirely uncommon among both antiwesterns and the real history of the Old West,
given the huge melting pot it was of people, beliefs and cultures during the
various land and gold rushes, as well as the large scale use of cheap immigrant
labour when building these towns and railroads, seen here in the form of the
chinese miners who dig for silver, and again, something not seen in a lot of
the more sanitised views of the West. Even something as benign and trivial as
rabbits isn’t safe from this inversion of the familiar, becoming more vampiric
and taking on traits of their frontier co-habitants, like coyotes and wolves
which, by the way, I can’t help but feel was on some level a nod to this (plays
Monty Python & The Holy Grail rabbit clip) and actually, now that I’m thinking about it, the film’s
sense of humour definitely has a flavour akin to that, especially towards Terry
Gilliam’s work, whose films often had that combination of the absurd and the
macabre when it came to the humour, and in particular, Adventures of Baron
Munchausen (my personal favourite film of his next to Brazil, by the way) and
Tideland came to mind, the former because of its Pythonesque gags that often
poked fun at some of the absurdities of the genre it was part of, a number of
which were visually oriented, much like the ones in this film, and Tideland
because of the dark aesthetic and oddball nature of the story, taking mundane
images like a girl playing with dolls or moving house, and turning into
something surreal and twisted, much like this film combines two sides of the
Western to create its own world, the vampire rabbits and Silver in a tree being
a prime example of something that would be right at home in one of Terry’s
films.

In fact, just a
quick side note before we move on, we have a film here that combines the action
style and type of humour of two film makers who made some of their best and
most recognised work during the 1980s. I’m not including it as part of the
analysis because it might be reading a little too deep, but it’s an interesting
note I figured I’d share.

Now getting back
on track, I mentioned earlier that the film’s idea of imagination also plays
into another key theme, which is masks, an obvious choice given who the titular
character is but still worth a glance regardless. Many characters in the film
use masks for different reasons, but all linked with the concept of identity:
The Ranger’s is to protect his identity and those he loves while Tonto’s is
actually his life purpose; he creates this whole mythology around Cavendish and
Cole after they massacre his village that they are monsters (or Wendingos as he
calls them) and it’s his duty to hunt them and kill them with silver weaponry,
and using this to help him try to deal with the pain and torment he lives with
since he’s the one who inadvertently led to this situation because as a boy, he
not only rescued the two men from dying in the desert, but also shows them
where a vein of silver is in exchange for a gift from Cole; a silver watch.
Cavendish’s mask is one of being this powerful, intimidating monster and force
of evil who does things like consume the hearts of the dead when in actuality,
he’s just a hired gun working for the real villain, Cole, whose mask is one of
being an upright citizen, an all-American patriot seeking to help his fellow
man by building the transcontinental railroad and facilitating their travel, as
well as being an older man and thus a symbol of wisdom and authority, when in
reality he’s only for personal gain and advancing his position, using the
wealth from the secret silver mine and the press and glamour that building such
a thing as this railroad would bring and in the end, it’s ironically both of
these that become his undoing, as he goes off a cliff in a train and dies
crushed his own carts of silver. While this isn’t all that deep or subtle, it
is a nice touch that this was applied to several characters as opposed to just
the Ranger and Cole in the standard ‘Hero and Villain, two sides of the same
coin’ motif so commonly used and again, tying back into the whole theme of
mythology and storytelling with Tonto’s mask and how it gives him justification
and a vessel for his inner pain. What’s more, speaking as someone who’s been
involved with special schools in the past, a lot of the more eccentric children
tend to use their odd behaviour and mannerisms as a means to guise inner pain
and anxieties such as past trauma or abuse, and it’s certainly interesting to
see that being put up both in a big summer film as well as in a main protagonist.

To cap off what
has been probably the longest and meatiest part of this (already hefty video), I
feel that the dismissal of the film narrative was on some level unfair, and
while some ideas maybe could’ve been explored a little bit more or streamlined
a bit, to out and out claim that the film is either wasteful or devoid of
anything meaningful or semi-interesting is simply straight up disingenuous and
dare I say, dishonest which is something I’m sure many people don’t want to be
accused of, but well, the evidence speaks for itself.

PART IV: PERSONAL
PEEVES

Remember I said I
almost completely disagreed with the complaints about excessive material? Well,
the elements that I concede should’ve been cut are more perfunctory moments or
scenes, as opposed to what many felt should’ve gone. Scenes like the Ranger
being dragged through Silver’s freshly dumped dung while unconscious just feel
cheap and uninspired in contrast to a lot of the more oddball and inventive
gags in the rest of the film, and while it makes for some really great
cinematography, the spirit platform that Reid awakens on adds nothing to the
story, either thematically or narratively as none of the other characters ever
acknowledge it again or explain its purpose. There’s no scene where Tonto says
something like ‘Oh, I put you up on sky stair to talk to great Father’ or
something like that, and as a result, it wastes a minute and a half of screen
time in a feel that needs to use its large runtime carefully and wisely.

Plus
there are also some contrivances and plot holes sprinkled here and there that I
simply can’t defend and leave me scratching my head, such as the bank that the
Ranger and Tonto rob just so happening to have Cole’s supply of explosives that
they use to blow up the main bridge, or Tonto being able to land on a pile of
rocks after falling from a moving train without suffering some type of injury
or slow down during the final set piece. He doesn’t even grunt upon impact, he
just gurns a little, and then gets up and moves right along.

Also, the one
time that I felt a genuinely problematic tone shift was right after the big
silver mine battle, when a bunch of Comanche and US soldiers have been killed,
and Reid is mediating over his failure to stop Cavendish and Cole, as well as
rescue Rebecca and her son, but then right after, we get the Gilliam-sque joke
of Silver in the tree, and though I did laugh at it as a standalone joke, it
felt much too soon for it to be there and it felt a tad rushed in. The scene
should’ve been allowed to breathe a little more and give our two leads a
moments together to get themselves together and even throw in some more
character growth and allow us to sink into the morose nature of this moment.

Furthermore, on
the note of characters, I mentioned that Barry Pepper's captain suffers from an
inconsistency, though it's no fault of the actor as he plays both well, but the
film, at first, wants us to sympathise with the captain, having joined the
villains under a false assumption that it was the local Native Americans who
were raiding farms, whereas in reality, it was the doing of Butch and his gang,
and regrets killing all those Comanches and feels the blood on his hands.
However, during the final set piece, he goes crazy and seems to relish killing
and being mean towards Rebecca's son while Tonto tries to rescue him and also
tries to goofily fondle Red like a Looney Tunes character, which she uses to
have him shoot a bunch of explosives with her leg as a distraction while Tonto
steals the Constitution train. Though Pepper is a lot of fun to watch, going
completely nuts, it comes out of nowhere and he behaves more like the psychotic
captain from Mask of Zorro than someone with the weight of regret on his
shoulders, and it’s another area where the tone can’t be explained by Tonto’s
storytelling.

And finally, more
scenes with Red, given how fun Helena is, but also to make more relevant to the
main plot, and not just a tool for the use of our heroes when they are in a jam.
Here’s pulling for either that extended version or a ton of deleted scenes on
the Blu-ray.

CONCLUSION

And with that,
we’ve finally reached the conclusion of this lengthy saga of analysis, debate
and discussion, and it’s probably the most I’ve ever had to do for any video of
mine, and considering that I’ve been doing film criticism online for 3 and half
years now, that’s saying something given some of the gems and turkeys I’ve
tackled. To conclude, Lone Ranger may not be the most groundbreaking or
original blockbuster, but it’s certainly one of the gutsiest in a good while,
taking a forgotten character in a genre past its golden days and then inverting
all of that, playing off the myths and matinee fun of the classic West with the
grime and darkness of both the real west and the revisionist West in a
grandiose and indulgent spectacle that, though it may not hit its marks
consistently, when it does, it really does and to quote Robbie Collin of the
Daily Telegraph:

‘"[I]n a sane world this would never have been made,
although I’m really rather glad someone did."

I hope I
articulated myself well and made a video that was engaging regardless of which
side of the fence you’re on. If you still don’t like the film, that’s
completely fine, but all I ask is that you be respectful of my view, the same
way I am of yours. With that said,
thank you for listening and well, till next time.

-

And by the way,
just to step out of objective mode for a moment, for those who are calling Lone
Ranger ‘the worst film of the year!’, watch Movie 43. You’ll change your mind....

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Sequel article to this available here: http://abeldiazportfolio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/is-disneys-lone-ranger-new-munchausen.html Here, I discuss the similarities to another noted fantasy flop, Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and how much they, surprisingly, have in common)

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